Hou Wai-lu

Born 1903 in Shansi Province. Chinese historian and philosopher.

Hou Wai-lu studied in France. He was a professor at the University of Harbin from 1930, and later at the University of Peking. During the war against the Japanese invaders (1937–45) he was head of the national revolutionary university in T’ai-yüan. In 1955 he became a member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Hou Wai-lu translated K. Marx’s Das Kapital into Chinese and was one of the first Marxist historians of Chinese social thought. He came under attack in 1966, in the course of the Cultural Revolution.